


burning, beautiful

by opheliasnettles



Category: Hedda Gabler - Ibsen
Genre: F/F, Genderbending, Lesbian Character, ever written something no one wanted? yeah me too, mind the tws in the notes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 12:13:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29609241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opheliasnettles/pseuds/opheliasnettles
Summary: Ejlert would pick up her hand so gently and trace her finger over each line, each smooth little fold. I never knew how to read palms, she said, but that’s not real, anyway. I can say you’ll die an old rich widow and it means the same as saying you’ll die at twenty-nine destitute.Twenty-nine seemed impossibly far away back then.
Relationships: Hedda Gabler/Ejlert Løvborg
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	burning, beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> content warnings: underage drinking, mentions of sex, mentions of guns, implied suicide
> 
> I think some translations spell it Eilert, but mine said Ejlert, so I went with that.
> 
> Please excuse the bad Norwegian. I just hit it with ol’ google translate. My apologies to the people of Norway.

Of all of them, Hedda thinks she will miss Ejlert the most. 

She was always a romantic at heart. Tender, soft. When they were just young girls, still foolish and drunk on the freedom of summer, Hedda would hold out her hand. Ejlert would pick it up so gently and trace her finger over each line, each smooth little fold.  _ I never knew how to read palms _ , she said,  _ but that’s not real, anyway. I can say you’ll die an old rich widow and it means the same as saying you’ll die at twenty-nine destitute.  _

Twenty-nine seemed impossibly far away back then. 

Ejlert gave Hedda a bottle of wine for her fifteenth birthday.  _ You’ve never drank, Hedda _ , she said,  _ you simply must know what it’s like, oh it’s glorious, to feel so free. I make my best work when I am drunk.  _ They had the bottle on the beach and threw themselves into the lake, tumbling around like pebbles. Ejlert took Hedda’s hand, reverently, and kissed the tips of her fingers. 

Ejlert wrote a poem about it. She put it in the papers, like a sap. Kjærlighetsfeil. Love bug. Løvborg. Subtle. 

They kissed. Schoolgirls kiss but not like they did, Hedda supposes. Not with tongues and hands and hair. It felt strange, to open her lips and smash them against Ejlert’s. She did it anyway. 

Hedda could never really love the poor girl. She saw it, saw her end miles away. Ejlert was always mercurial, always intense, always burning. She was an actor, a poet, a writer, an artist, an aesthete, a lover, steady on a diet of alcohol and ink and lesbian poetry. Women like that don’t live to see forty. 

She was right, really. Despicably. 

Hedda isn’t a lesbian. Not one like Ejlert. Maybe it was the closest she came to loving someone, regardless. When Ejlert touched her it was fine. She never cared much. Ejlert could kiss her, could call her  _ muse _ , could run her hands across Hedda’s chest all she wanted. It was all boring, but it made her happy, and Hedda obliged. 

When Tesman touches her she wants to vomit. When Brack touches her she feels ill. She does not want a man near her like that. Such things are unavoidable as a married woman, however, and she finds herself holding back bile nightly as Jörgen does what he wishes, her body limp like a piece of wilted celery. He doesn’t seem to notice. 

It is all horribly unbearable, she thinks. Perhaps she should have been Ejlert’s beautiful, burning, tragic lover after all. 

Perhaps it would be easier if they could point the pistols at each other and fire at arm’s length. 


End file.
